Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5,
I(
, bokov7s, P&z (a minor work) has receritly been issued by Doubleday and 1 though when the, time came , she did ,
: though the ,next issue of Doubledays the :actual, seducing, yet his sustaindd,
p?sslon, and pi-odigiqus sexual demands
, Anchor Review will idcl~de a sizeable
presently repel h$r: He. holds her by
excerpt from Lolita. I suppose our pub;
has no ,mdney and n6, on&
lishers are afraid that Lo&
YouId thre,+-she
who
will
take,
care :df h&r: B& he: in
A, Critfcal -Apprclisai
bring them, lawsuits for being pornoturn i6 the atixidus seiyant of her wliims, .
I,
1: ,: grhphic ai;d immqral.,
By
R&N
for :he knows thai ,she, will escape him
/ BERNARD
,,S
An d pornographkrs ~5would,I am sure,
:I
(if only by li;la&ri,ng,into adoles<e@e): ,,,
_,,find it faiily,, satisfactom foi their lewd
Introdticti,qn,,
by M@x Lirnes$
)
When. finally hShe disappkari,
he is ,,
I'
fahtasies. But only fairly satisfactory,
driven to insanity foi a time and t.0 I : & is a, book for n&d-centurup Amar
for,.like Ulysses befbre it, LoEta by high
ioa in that the inktitutiowo&
..,~is
despair; a-few$ears ,18t2r he finds her
time, and so,cial tho~ngbt of the America *
art transinittes
pt$ns,
motiyes and
of
the,lSSOs
serve
as
&
bnokdrop
&&,st
whi6h
the figure
of V&l&
and his
actions which in ordinary life are con- married to ,a workingman a,+ pregria&,
idas
ii pro;iected.
amost prdinary! girl. Hi discovers from
sidered indecent, into objkcts of ,delight,
It
is not
ami eesy
gi4BBPng
that
hei- .that a. bad ~ Playwright
and filq
Veblen gets ,. . ., This book *is a sym.compassion , arid contemIjlation.
Lolita
pathetic
one only in the ~enee that. the
writer
namtd
Quilty
had
helped
her
tb
will turn, no reasonable, jitizeri into a
leaming
of the authors
v&lues is in
e&ape and, had th$,n dro&e$ I h,er. 1At
the sad direotioll &s Veblens,
But
pornographer; thl indecency in it, like
the &itical
process through, which ,the,
the
end,
ht
mui-ders
Quilty.
,Veblen thedries
are sifted is it fiercely
the crime, is always seen with .a clarity
exacting
ones Having
worked
with
Obviously ttie book ioricerns a dis: which does not Cncourage the fabricatBernard
Rosenberg
I can testify
both
eased man performi@
immoral, acts.,
jdyfnlly
and ruefull$
that his is one
ing
of
fantasies.
&LI:
of
the
most
mordant
and
brilliant
.But the book ,is no more immoral than
minds among the younger
social srienThe novel concerns an Americanized
tistn, and. that be delights
in carving
h .Europenn of middie years whose tr&e 1it is pornographic. Fdr we know from the
into lit%
pieces tbe sacred cows of
foreword,
that
.the
narrator
is
a
criminal
the
aaademib
world.
,,In
that
sense he
love is onI+ foi nymphets,
certain
writes
in the sl%rlt in which, Veblen
and
mentally
,abnormal,
and
this
knowlwrote.
.
.
1
--Max
Lerner
: girls between nihe and fourteen. :He
/ falls in love with. one named Lolita, a edge femplrs qur reaction to evkrything,
,Available
at $2.50 ,a copy
he says of himself: Most of ,,gll, bsth
,from
Ieading bookstores
girl whom we discover to be an, al+
Nabokov
and,
the
imaginary
narrator,
or from the putqlisher.
gether unexceptional child of the times,
Humbert Humbert, are wholly unam, ill-parented,
traditioni&,
Hol&?,odpljBw
AFFAIRS PRESS,
. biguous about the nioralitjr of the acts
rL
and
motives.
,f
+
419
New
Jersey Ave.
)
*&,01&a has been reviewed, by the
Washington. 3,, 8. C.
I lo?ed yoil. I Gas ,a pdntapod
U.S. Customs and has,, been ,found admisbible to this cohntry.
monster, but I loved YOU. I was,
fdowrhip.
Drum in Johannesburg
DRUM. The Ncnrspaper that Won the
Heart of Anlerica. By Anthony Sampson. Houghton M i N h Company. 256
pp. 83.50.
FOR threeand
a hilfyearsAnthony
Sarnpson was editor of Druns, a monthly
magazine
for
Africans, published
in
Johannesburg. Sampson is an Englishman, but hisconcern was to produce a
journal which
would
serve
the real
needs-and enjoy the patronagerof the
people to which it was addressed. Thus
thereader will find that the book reveals a great deal aboutthe lives, the
work, the joys and suffering, the hopes,
of mind of the
aspirationsandhabits
Africans. And thesearethe
people of
modern South Africa, the Africans of
the future.
The keynote of the book is Nationali s m . The, African
NatlonaIisrn
is a
BlackNationalism
in the sense ( t h a t
these people haveacceptedtheir
color
as thebadge of their common interest.
But it dlffers fromwhite(Afrkaner)
NationaIisrn in t h a t i t does not cling to
itspast.
The Africanhasturned
his
back on rural tribalism as an ideal. H e
has been introduced t o urban llfe, t o
buses and cars, electricity and modern
shops, to education andart,
t o rnuslc
a n d poetry,tobrightlightsand
jatls.
H i hasadoptedWestern
civilization,
good and bad, as his life. .He needs the
city as much as the crty needs him. and
he is not going back to the tribe. Early
in his editorship,
African
friends advised Sarnpson:
..
I h e m e e t i q of culrures produces
vivid incongruities.
T
424
.,&.
wit11 natives..
i t makes
sick, man. And
he
really looked
sick.
method of increasing sales
was to convince
the Africanthat D , . ~
was his paper by championing
the
cause of the African. This was done by
having Drum reportersinvestigate
reports of exploitation andmaltreatment of Africans and exposing these cases in
the magazine. This the visits andesDrum
(one of the
ploits of Mr.
Afrlcan reporters) became Icgcndary.
Mr. Drum got himself arrested in
order t o visitthe jail,signed on as a
laborer on a notorious Bcthal farm, and
thcseandmanyotherstories,repeated
in the book, give tlre reader an 111s1ght
intocontemporary African life.
The evaluatlon of the life of the Cape
colored (people of mixed race) is less
detailedandaccurate,
because Drlrm
dld not operatemuch in CapeTown,
and because i t concentrated on Africans. Some readers will complain that
the positive aspects of white policy
are not sufficiently stressed. Butthat
is not the purpose of the book or of thc
.
purpose
is
to
magazine D P I ~ V LThe
portraytheurban
African of the locations, and this i s well done through the
facts, as well as through the rapid, racy,
humorous idlorn of the African. M ~ s e r y
andfrustration,humorandwit,poiiti-,
cal determination, squalor, dignityand
hurni!~ation--these flow in rapid sequence through the pages of Mr. Sampsons book.
obliged toEating
LETTER
THE inhabttants of Florence and Rome
MILAN
Mdan. In his poem,
Praire of Limestone, Auden speaks of the difference
betweenItaly and America, and states
that the latter i s the country for serious
people. Mdan
takes
everything
seriously. I n bars,waiters have a servicewlth-a-smile, customer-is-right air whrch
is the esact opposite of the intimate, erratic, dehghtful andexasperatingattitude assumed by Roman or NeapoIltali
waiters For those df us who livefarther
to the South, a visit t o Mllan is a refreshing relaxation into
reallty
and
order, like going from Paris to London.
In April, two important events proved
how seriously h11lan takes business and
how seriously it takesart.Tile
President of Italy arrived on the12thto
inaugusate Milan's thirty-fifth
annual
TradesFair;and
on the14th,Maria
NIeneghini Callas sangthefirst
performance of the revived A n n a B o h n ,
The NATION